SOLIDARITY: World buys pizza for Wisconsin protestors

Posted on February 21, 2011 by Buck

Since the Koch brothers are imposing their agenda onto Wisconsin through Governor Walker, Governor Walker’s actions aren’t about fiscal responsibility but power. The governor is willing to give away tax breaks to corporations, but he isn’t interested in negotiating with union leaders who are willing to make concessions. Via the Honolulu Star-Advertiser:

[Governor Scott Walker] rejected $810 million in federal money that the state was getting to build a train line between Madison and Milwaukee, saying the project would ultimately cost the state too much to operate. He decided to turn the state’s Department of Commerce into a “public-private hybrid,” in which hundreds of workers would need to reapply for their jobs.

He and state lawmakers passed $117 million in tax breaks for businesses and others, a move that many of his critics point to now as a sign that Walker made the state’s budget gap worse, then claimed an emergency that requires sacrifices from unions. Technically, the tax cuts do not go into effect in this year’s budget (which Walker says includes a $137 million shortfall), but in the coming two-year budget, during which the gap is estimated at $3.6 billion.

Any reasonable person can see what’s really happening here. However, the Tea Party doesn’t care for reason or facts, and its members know nothing of governance. These people must be kept far from all three branches of government. More via Paul Krugman:

What Mr. Walker and his backers are trying to do is to make Wisconsin — and eventually, America — less of a functioning democracy and more of a third-world-style oligarchy. And that’s why anyone who believes that we need some counterweight to the political power of big money should be on the demonstrators’ side.

Some background: Wisconsin is indeed facing a budget crunch, although its difficulties are less severe than those facing many other states. Revenue has fallen in the face of a weak economy, while stimulus funds, which helped close the gap in 2009 and 2010, have faded away.

In this situation, it makes sense to call for shared sacrifice, including monetary concessions from state workers. And union leaders have signaled that they are, in fact, willing to make such concessions.

But Mr. Walker isn’t interested in making a deal. Partly that’s because he doesn’t want to share the sacrifice: even as he proclaims that Wisconsin faces a terrible fiscal crisis, he has been pushing through tax cuts that make the deficit worse. Mainly, however, he has made it clear that rather than bargaining with workers, he wants to end workers’ ability to bargain.

The bill that has inspired the demonstrations would strip away collective bargaining rights for many of the state’s workers, in effect busting public-employee unions. Tellingly, some workers — namely, those who tend to be Republican-leaning — are exempted from the ban; it’s as if Mr. Walker were flaunting the political nature of his actions.

Why bust the unions? As I said, it has nothing to do with helping Wisconsin deal with its current fiscal crisis. Nor is it likely to help the state’s budget prospects even in the long run: contrary to what you may have heard, public-sector workers in Wisconsin and elsewhere are paid somewhat less than private-sector workers with comparable qualifications, so there’s not much room for further pay squeezes.

So it’s not about the budget; it’s about the power.

. . .

You don’t have to love unions, you don’t have to believe that their policy positions are always right, to recognize that they’re among the few influential players in our political system representing the interests of middle- and working-class Americans, as opposed to the wealthy. Indeed, if America has become more oligarchic and less democratic over the last 30 years — which it has — that’s to an important extent due to the decline of private-sector unions.

And now Mr. Walker and his backers are trying to get rid of public-sector unions, too.

Republican policies merely concentrate wealth from the middle class into the hands of the rich. Indeed, trickle-down economics is merely a myth. Via The Business Insider:

Nationally, you remember, Republicans demanded an extension of the Bush tax cuts for the rich. They’re intent on extending them for the next ten years, at a cost of $900 billion. They’ve also led the way on cutting the estate tax, and on protecting Wall Street private equity and hedge-fund managers whose earnings are taxed at the capital gains rate of 15 percent.

Meanwhile, of course, more and more of the nation’s income and wealth has been concentrating at the top. In the late 1970s, the top got 9 percent of total income. Now it gets more than 20 percent.

So the problem isn’t that “we’ve” been spending too much. It’s that most Americans have been getting a steadily smaller share of the nation’s total income. And the super-rich have been contributing a steadily-declining share of their own incomes in taxes to support what the nation needs — both at the federal and at the state levels.

The coming showdowns and shutdowns must not mask what’s really going on. And Democrats should make sure the public understands what’s really at stake.

ENERGY: As the world’s population grows, meeting future energy needs will be difficult

Posted on February 18, 2011 by Buck

Image: Each red square illustrates an area that could capture three terawatts of solar energy. Together, the red squares could supply the world’s energy needs

There is no such thing as unlimited growth, so the U.S. government and other governments must understand the connection between energy availability and population growth by integrating sustainability into energy policy and into energy law. The current business-as-usual scenario will not meet the future energy needs of a rapidly growing world.

Also, exponential population growth and increasing energy demands will impact efforts to mitigate climate change. As a result, large amounts of renewable, clean energy will be required to sustain the energy needs of a growing world. However, not even nuclear power can keep up with escalating population growth and the future energy needs of a business-as-usual world in 2050. Solar energy, however, is the only natural energy resource that can keep up with human consumption.

Nathan Lewis provides a gloomy but sobering assessment of the challenges humanity will face in meeting its future energy needs (emphasis added):

Energy is the single most important technological challenge facing humanity today. Nothing else in science or technology comes close in comparison. If we don’t invent the next nano-widget, if we don’t cure cancer in 20 years, like it or not the world will stay the same. But with energy, we are in the middle of doing the biggest experiment that humans will have ever done, and we get to do that experiment exactly once. And there is no tomorrow, because in 20 years that experiment will be cast in stone. If we don’t get this right, we can say as students of physics and chemistry that we know that the world will, on a timescale comparable to modern human history, never be the same.

The currency of the world is not the dollar, it’s the joule.

. . .

Humanity’s current energy consumption rate is 13 trillion thermal watts, or 13 terawatts.

. . .

The United States consumes a quarter of the world’s energy, at a rate of about 3.3 terawatts[.]

. . .

With population and GDP growth conspiring together, we would then obtain a tripling of energy demand by 2050. This is partly mitigated, however, by the fact that we’re using energy more efficiently per unit of GDP. The ratio of energy consumption to GDP has been declining at about 1 percent, globally averaged, per year. The United States actually saves energy at a faster rate, about 2 percent per year. Because we have such a high per-capita energy baseline consumption, it is easier for us to save off that base, whereas the developing countries save less. The “business as usual” scenario assumes that this will continue, and if we project that down, we will achieve an average energy consumption of two kilowatts per person within our lifetimes. (The United States now uses 10 kilowatts per person.) But factor in population growth and conservative economic growth, and we’ll still need twice as much energy as we need now.

In terms of average thermal load, a person on a 2,000-calorie-per-day diet is basically a hundred-watt lightbulb. And in our highly mechanized western agricultural system, the energy embedded in food—to run the farm and grow the food and transport it to the supermarket and put it in the refrigerator—is 10 to 20 times the energy content of the food itself. And the farther you live from the food source, the more embedded energy you consume. If we are 100-watt lightbulbs, this means that just keeping us fed requires one to two kilowatts.

. . .

Ice cores taken near Vostok Station, Antarctica, show that the CO₂ level has been in a narrow band between 200 and 300 parts per million by volume (ppmv) for the last 425,000 years; data from other cores have extended this back to 670,000 years. Current CO₂ levels are about 380 ppmv. “Business as usual” will require 10 trillion watts, 10 terawatts, of carbon-free power, and it never stabilizes CO₂ levels—they just keep going up. So even on that track, we are betting against data that goes back for almost a million straight years, and hoping that this time, we get lucky.

. . .

[U]nfortunately, there is no natural destruction mechanism for carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. Unlike ozone depletion, it will not heal by itself through chemical processes. In our highly oxidizing atmosphere, CO₂ is an end product. The lifetimes of CO₂ in the atmosphere are well known, and the time for 500 to 600 ppmv of CO₂ to decay back to 300 ppmv is between 500 and 5,000 years. Which means that the CO₂ we produce over the next 40 years, and its associated effects, will last for a timescale comparable to modern human history. This is why, within the next 20 years, we either solve this problem or the world will never be the same. How different that world will be, we won’t know until we get there.

If we want to hold CO₂ even to 550 ppmv, even with aggressive energy efficiency we will need as much clean, carbon-free energy within the next 40 years, online, as the entire oil, natural gas, coal, and nuclear industries today combined—10 to 15 terawatts. This is not changing a few lightbulbs in Fresno, this is building an industry comparable to 50 Exxon Mobils. Furthermore, if we wait 30 years, the amount of carbon-free energy we’ll need will be even greater, and needed even faster, because in the meantime we will have put out 30 years of accumulated CO₂ emissions that will not go away for centuries to millennia. So stabilizing at 550 ppmv will then require about 15 to 20 terawatts of carbon-free power in 2050.

. . .

So let’s look at carbon-neutral energy sources. We could go nuclear, which is the only proven technology that we have that could scale to these numbers. We have about 400 nuclear power plants in the world today. To get the 10 terawatts we need to stay on the “business-as-usual” curve, we’d need 10,000 of our current one-gigawatt reactors, and that means we’d have to build one every other day somewhere in the world for the next 50 straight years. I’ve been giving this talk in one version or another for five years—we should have already built on the order of 1,000 new reactors, or double what’s ever been built, just to stay on track. So we’re really behind.

There isn’t enough terrestrial uranium on the planet to build them as once-through reactors. We could get enough uranium from seawater, if we processed the equivalent of 3,000 Niagara Falls 24/7 to do the extraction. Which means that the only credible nuclear-energy source today involves plutonium. That’s never talked about by the politicians, but it’s a fact. Forgive my facetiousness, but on some level we should be thanking North Korea and Iran for doing their part to mitigate global warming. We’d need about 10,000 fast-breeder reactors and, by the way, their commissioned lifetime is only 50 years. That means that after we choose this route, we’re building one of them every other day, or more rapidly, forever.

We don’t have time for the physicists to figure out how to make nuclear fusion reactors—they’ve been saying it will be demonstrated (although not economical) in 35 years, and they’ve been saying that for the last 50. If we assume they’re right this time, then ITER, a multinational demonstration fusion reactor being built in the south of France, will demonstrate break even—that is, it will put out as much energy as it takes to run it—in 35 years, and it will run for all of one week before the entire machine will, by design, disintegrate in the presence of that high-neutron radiation and temperature flux. And in the meantime we would have to build a commercial fission reactor every day for the next 30 years. It’s not going to happen.

. . .

One hundred twenty thousand terawatts of solar power hits the earth . . . It is the only natural energy resource that can keep up with human consumption. Everything else will run up against the stops, soon. In fact, more solar energy hits the earth in one hour than all the energy the world consumes in a year.

NATURAL GAS: Drilling companies injected over 30-million gallons of diesel underground to extract natural gas

Posted on February 2, 2011 by Buck

Between 2005 and 2009, oil and gas service companies injected more than 30 million gallons of diesel fuel or hydraulic fracturing fluids containing diesel fuel in wells in 19 states, according to an investigation released by House Energy and Commerce Committee Democrats.

— Politico

Image of frackwater via Keith Srakocic/Associated Press. Frackwater is a byproduct produced from natural gas drilling activities. Image of protest sign via ltmayers on Flickr.

The fossil-fuel industry doesn’t make or produce coal, natural gas, petroleum, or any other type of fossil fuel. The industry merely extracts materials that have been made by natural processes within the Earth.

However, the fossil-fuel industry reaps huge profits by polluting the human environment and natural landscapes. Although, the fossil-fuel industry has a well-documented history of making profits at the expense of the environment and human health, the industry has received billions in subsidies from governments and taxpayers. The entire process is deplorable and immoral. More via the Dallas Morning News (emphasis added):

Drilling companies violated federal law by injecting 16 million gallons of diesel fuel underground in Texas to extract natural gas, senior House Democrats said Monday.

In a letter to the Environmental Protection Agency , the lawmakers said the companies failed to obtain necessary permits when they used diesel fuel in their hydraulic fracturing mixtures. The fracturing process, which is widely used in North Texas’ Barnett Shale, has come under scrutiny as environmental groups and some residents allege it has contaminated drinking water supplies.

The congressional inquiry, which began in early 2010 when Democrats controlled the House, did not conclude that the use of diesel polluted any drinking-water sources. The Democrats said the firms they questioned couldn’t provide data on the proximity of drilling operations to underground sources of drinking water.

. . .

Nationwide, over 32 million gallons of diesel fuel or fluids containing diesel were injected underground, the lawmakers wrote. The drilling firms used 10.2 million gallons of “straight diesel fuel” and 21.8 million gallons of products containing at least 30 percent diesel, the letter states

The ugly truth of the natural gas boom via the post-gazette.com:

The natural gas boom gripping parts of the United States has a nasty byproduct: wastewater so salty, and so polluted with metals like barium and strontium, that most states require drillers to get rid of the stuff by injecting it down shafts thousands of feet deep.

But not in Pennsylvania, one of the states at the center of the gas rush. In Pennsylvania, the liquid that gushes from gas wells is only partially treated for substances that could be environmentally harmful, then dumped into rivers and streams from which communities get their drinking water.

In the two years since the frenzy of activity began in the vast underground rock formation known as the Marcellus Shale, Pennsylvania has been the only state letting its waterways serve as the primary disposal place for huge amounts of wastewater produced by a drilling technique called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. State regulators, initially caught flat-footed, tightened the rules this year for any new water treatment plants, but let existing operations continue discharging water into rivers.

At least 3.6 million barrels of the waste were sent to treatment plants that empty into rivers during the 12 months ending June 30, state records show. That’s enough to cover a square mile with more than 8 1/2 inches of brine.

Halliburton is among twelve companies that were cited in the House probe. Via Reuters:

The probe of diesel use in hydraulic fracturing, a practice that has allowed drillers to tap abundant shale gas, found that oil services firms such as Halliburton (HAL.N: Quote) and BJ Services, which was bought by Baker Hughes Inc (BHI.N: Quote), injected millions of gallons of fluids containing the fuel into wells between 2005 and 2009. A total of 12 companies were cited in the probe for using diesel without proper permits.

Critics say the chemicals used in the process, called “fracking,” can contaminate drinking water.

In 2003, the Environmental Protection Agency entered into a voluntary agreement with Halliburton, BJ Services and Schlumberger (SLB.N: Quote) to eliminate the use of diesel fuel in hydraulic fracturing fluids injected into coalbed methane wells.

In addition, a 2005 energy law exempted hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, from regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act, except when diesel is used.

Still, the probe found that no oil and gas service companies sought or were issued permits for the use of diesel fuel in fracking between 2005 and 2009.

Democrats who sponsored the probe in the House of Representatives urged the EPA to look into this matter.

NONRENEWABLE RESOURCES: Energy analyst predicts that oil could reach $300 in ten years. Can the GOP’s energy policy meet our future energy needs?

Posted on November 20, 2010 by Buck

Images via Grant Neufeld and pshab on Flickr.

How will the future economy of the United States respond to rising oil prices or to $300-a-barrel oil? Under the Obama Administration and a Democratic majority, we’ve seen the federal government attempt to stimulate renewable energy by investing into it, by contributing to energy-storage technology, and by recognizing the utility of alternative-fuel vehicles.

Despite fossil fuels contributing to climate change, national security concerns, and the pollution of the human environment, the GOP embraces an economy dependent on dirty, nonrenewable fossil fuels. Fossil fuels may seem cheap, but they’re not. The cheap cost of fossil fuels, paid at the pump for example, doesn’t reflect the true cost of fossil fuels, because the price at the pump doesn’t include costs that are a consequence of the negative externalities associated with burning fossil fuels. For example, it has been estimated by numerous studies that the negative externalities associated with burning fossil fuels cost governments and the public billions of dollars each year. This means that while fossil-fuel companies receive record profits, they’re not responsible for the consequences of doing dirty business or for the billions of dollars that governments and the public are forced to pick up. Additionally, the fossil-fuel industry receives government subsidies to pollute the human environment. These fossil-fuel subsidies must be eliminated to “enhance energy security, reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and air pollution, and bring economic benefits.”

Given the facts and consequences associated with a fossil fuel-based economy, it would seem that a prudent and progressive energy policy shouldn’t be a partisan issue, but the Republican Party isn’t exactly known for pushing clean, sustainable, or rational energy policy reforms. For example, the Republican Party’s energy policy focuses on “lifting restrictions on ANWR, the Outer Continental Shelf, and oil shale in the Mountain West.” Also, the Republican Party claims that “revenue generated by the sale of leases will be invested in renewable and alternative sources of energy.” However, what will the United States utilize after these nonrenewable resources are exhausted? Why drill here, drill now when these minerals are sold on an international market, so why is it necessary to invade protected wilderness areas to extract minerals, which aren’t necessarily consumed domestically. Also, considering greenhouse gases, global warming, and climate change, why is it necessary to add even more trapped carbon dioxide — a greenhouse gas — into the atmosphere? Basically, the short-term benefits of extracting and using these minerals are outweighed by the long-term damage caused by climate change and a failure to implement a prudent or sustainable energy policy.

Furthermore, the Republican Party believes that “the best way for utility companies to reduce carbon emissions is to increase their supply of nuclear energy.” However, nuclear power isn’t cheap, and the costs associated with constructing new nuclear power plants have skyrocketed. There are also substantial costs associated with decommissioning nuclear power plants (“it may cost $300 million or more to shut down and decommission a plant“). Other negatives associated with nuclear power production include the fact that the nuclear power industry depends solely on a nonrenewable energy source, and there’s the well-known problem of storing nuclear waste. Also, “the process of thermoelectric generation from fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and natural gas, as well as nuclear power, is water intensive. In fact, each kWh generated requires on average approximately 25 gallons of water to produce.” Therefore, drought could force nuclear power plants to shut down. What’s more, there are past and present safety concerns with nuclear power production. Recently, the nuclear power industry has been plagued by safety problems at the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant. Certainly, if the costs associated with decommissioning nuclear power plants, with the management of nuclear power plants, and with the disposal of nuclear waste are considered, then both solar and wind power are substantially cheaper than nuclear power.

The GOP’s talking points on energy also claim that Democrats tax energy, but the GOP makes no mention of the tax incentives and tax credits spurred under the Democratic majority and under the Obama Administration. Consequently, the Republican Party merely politicizes and trivializes the issue of energy. Why can’t the Republican Party aggressively pursue the development of renewables? Portugal is doing it. Denmark is doing it. Iceland is doing it. Even China understands the utility of developing its renewable energy sources.

Additionally, being a conservative political party, there are energy conservation strategies that the Republican Party should show open and strong support for but don’t. For example, there are the ideas of retrofitting buildings to conserve energy, adopting greener building standards to conserve energy, or even promoting the smart grid revolution to conserve energy. Also, instead of attacking it, the Republican Party should show strong support for science in order to spur innovation and technological development to meet our energy needs.

Given the Party’s energy policy positions, the new Republican majority in the House of Representatives threatens to stifle the progress made by the Democratic majority by resurrecting an energy policy focused too much on fossil fuels. For example, Representative Joe Barton, a Republican from Texas and BP apologist, is supposedly a contender for the chairmanship of the Energy and Commerce Committee. Another contender for the chairmanship of the Energy and Commerce Committee is John Shimkus, a Republican from Illinois. Shimkus is a climate-change denier, and once declared that “global warming isn’t something to worry about because God said he wouldn’t destroy the Earth after Noah’s flood.”

To summarize, the Republican energy policy lacks innovation and forward-thinking, and their energy policy merely utilizes old ideas, which don’t promote energy security. To put it another way, the Republican Party’s answer to our current energy crisis is to stick their heads in the sand. Also, the failure of the Republican Party to embrace prudent energy policies is the failure to recognize the connection between population growth, rising energy demand, natural resource unavailability, and rising energy and mineral prices. More on the future price of oil via Peak Oil News and Message Boards:

Ludwig: What is your oil price outlook as this whole new world order begins to take shape?

Maxwell: The supply and demand of oil in the world today are pretty close to each other, and there shouldn’t be too much deviation in 2010 and 2011. We think prices will stay within a band roughly between $67-$87 a barrel. When it gets up toward $87, it seems to retreat, and when it gets down toward $67, it seems to take off again. That’s because supply and demand are in rough balance.

But as the economic recovery continues, as more people use oil because there are more people in the world, and China and India continue to progress with rapid expansion of cars and the roads they are offering their people, demand for oil will continue to climb between 1 and 1.5 percent per year. That, combined with the depletion of these mature oil fields we’ve talked about, will bring us to a plateau by 2015-2017, where the rising production of newer oil fields will equal the falling production of old fields.

At that stage, prices will break through this $87 boundary—in about 2013, I’m thinking. And by 2015 we’ll be up to around $130-$150 a barrel. And then by 2020, when we have 1.5 percent increases in demand each year and 0.5 percent declines on the downside, then we’ll really be in a fix. At that time, I’m looking at $300 a barrel in money of the day. But remember, by then we will have the full effects of inflation over the prior 10 years, so it would probably be something like $200 a barrel in today’s terms, but it will have a nominal price of about $300 a barrel.

IDEAS WORTH SPREADING: Using fungi to self-assemble natural polymers

Posted on October 31, 2010 by Buck

Image via

Here’s an idea that uses fungi to self-assemble natural polymers by using agricultural waste. The green technology uses less energy and seems to be a competitive substitute to petroleum-based Styrofoam products. Via TED:

About this talk

Product designer Eben Bayer reveals his recipe for a new, fungus-based packaging material that protects fragile stuff like furniture, plasma screens — and the environment.

About Eben Bayer

Eben Bayer is co-inventor of MycoBond, an organic (really — it’s based on mycelium, a living, growing organism) adhesive that turns agriwaste into a foam-like material for packaging and insulation.

More on Mycobond™ via the U.S. National Science Foundation:

A packing material called Mycobond™, a composite of inedible agricultural waste and mushroom roots, grows itself. As a result, its manufacture requires just one eighth the energy and one tenth the carbon dioxide of traditional foam packing material. This time-lapse sequence shows a Mycobond™ packing component growing within a pre-designed mold.

Video: Replacing synthetics with natural composites